Watchdog Group Warns That India's Tiny Cars Are 'Gratuitously Dangerous'

The Tata Nano, billed as the world's cheapest car, and a host of
other top-selling small models from India have failed their first
independent crash tests, a global safety group said Friday.

The five entry-level vehicles -- including the country's
best-selling small car the Suzuki-Maruti Alto 800, as well as the
Ford Figo, the Hyundai i10 and the Volkswagen Polo -- scored no
stars out of five for protection.

The tests, carried out by the New Car Assessment Programme
(NCAP), saw the basic models, all without airbags, driven at 64
kilometres an hour (40 miles) into a block simulating a head-on
collision.

The secretary general of Global NCAP called them "gratuitously
dangerous" and blamed lax regulation which created an incentive
to make cheap but structurally unsound vehicles for India's
accident-prone roads.

"The injury recordings on the dummy, on the head, chest, and
upper legs, they're in the red. The chances of surviving a crash
are extremely low. It's either death or very serious injury,"
David Ward told AFP.

He said trials in recent years in Latin America had shown similar
problems but manufacturers there have begun to make progress
thanks in part to adverse publicity.

China too has begun imposing higher safety standards.

NCAP also tested the Indian cars in a crash simulation according
to United Nations standards -- a frontal collision at the
slightly slower speed of 56 kilometres an hour -- and none of
them passed.

"It's worrying to see levels of safety that are 20 years behind
the five-star standards now common in Europe and North America,"
said Global NCAP chairman Max Mosley, the former chief of
international motorsport.

Small vehicles are the biggest segment of the price-sensitive
Indian car market, which is coveted by global brands and domestic
manufacturers as working-class consumers upgrade from two- to
four-wheelers.

The country's roads are famously chaotic and among the most
dangerous in the world.

Around 140,000 people were killed in road accidents in 2012,
which works out to 16 an hour, according to the government's
National Crime Records Bureau.

The NCAP said the five vehicles it tested accounted for about 20
percent of all new cars sold in India annually.

The Tata Nano was the brainchild of the former boss of the Tata
conglomerate Ratan Tata who wanted a cheap car for the masses.
But it has flopped since its launch in 2009, partly due to poor
marketing.

Tata said its cars passed "all Indian safety regulations,
including the frontal barrier crash test at 48 kilometres an
hour," while Maruti Suzuki had no immediate reaction.

Hyundai said its "vehicles are designed and built to meet all the
prescribed safety standards set by Indian Regulatory
Authorities".

Ford said safety was "one of the highest priorities in the design
of our vehicles".

"We are monitoring the progress of this review and will work with
Indian authorities, GNCAP and the other relevent stake holders as
appropriate," a Ford spokesperson said.

The NCAP tested only the basic models of the cars in question and
it said the Figo and Polo would provide much better protection if
fitted with airbags, which were an optional extra.

But the Nano, the i10 and the Alto had "inadequate" structures
that meant that even air bags would "not be effective in reducing
the risk of serious injury".

Volkswagen said it had withdrawn its Polo model without airbags
and it stressed that the with-airbags version was certified as
the safest in the segment.